Fullepub 
Chapter Six
chapter six
June 15, 1929
Brandenburg, Vermont
Last night, after unpacking and settling in, we dined on brook trout and baby potatoes in an ornate dining room with cream-colored walls and lush velvet curtains. A man played low, moody music on the piano. Will produced a small flask of apple brandy from back home and tipped a little into my glass. I wore a new silver satin dress, and under the lights of crystal chandeliers it sparkled like fish scales.
Mr. Benson Harding, the owner of the hotel, visited each table with his wife, greeting his guests personally. He was a tall man with dark hair, a carefully trimmed mustache, and piercing blue eyes that seemed to be watching everything in the room at once. He shook Will’s hand and introduced us to his wife, Eliza, a stunning woman with bobbed black hair and eyes just as dark. She had a small raised scar under her left eye, which somehow made her face more beautiful. Her lips were painted red, her eyelashes heavy with mascara. Her dress was black but covered in sequins that shimmered under the lights. They looked so perfect and happy together, arm in arm in their fine clothes. “And are you enjoying your stay so far, Mrs. Monroe?”
“It’s delightful,” I assured her. “Like something from a dream!”
She smiled, leaned in so that her lips were just inches from my ear, her breath warm on my neck, and said in a low voice meant only for me, “Isn’t it just?”
As the evening wore on, the music turned lively and the piano player was joined by a drummer, bass player, and a man with a horn. He sang “Everybody Loves My Baby,” and some couples got up to dance. Will took my hand and led me to the small dance floor, and we spun until I was sure I would fall. The room was buzzing with music and people talking and laughing. Will whispered something in my ear, but I couldn’t make out what it was. “I’m afraid I’ve had too much brandy,” I admitted.
“No such thing,” he said, and suggested we get some air. His eyes looked impossibly green. I leaned against him, said, “Aren’t we just the luckiest people on earth? To have found each other?” He smiled and kissed me.
We took an evening stroll around the grounds, our arms linked. Crickets and katydids sang from the grass. The peacocks were tucked away somewhere for the night. We headed toward the springs, taking a stone-lined path, but they were roped off with DANGER and CLOSED signs. I could hear running water. There was a sharp, mineral tang in the air. Someone had clearly already disobeyed the signs, because I heard a splash and a giggle. I couldn’t see anything but the dark shadows of the trees that lined the pool area. “Maybe they’re skinny-dipping?” I said. I suggested that we sneak in, too.
“Scandalous, Mrs. Monroe,” he said, and raised his eyebrows, blushing slightly. “If there is a couple in there already, I’m sure they’d like their privacy.”
That night, I had the strangest dream. The sparrow’s egg was resting against my chest again. I picked it up and it cracked open, and water began to flow out of it. The water took shape, and a small child, about five or six years old, stepped out from beneath the stream of water. It was a little girl with dark hair and eyes, a narrow face, elvish features. She looked at me and smiled, and my heart banged hard in my chest as I smiled back. I recognized her dark, almond-shaped eyes as my own. She was me and yet not me. I knew at once that this was my child. My daughter.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” the child said.
I took her in my arms and wept, burying my face in her hair. She smelled like wind and summer rain, the forgotten afternoons of childhood. As I breathed her in, my chest ached with longing. I woke up crying, my arms empty. Moonlight filtered in through the windows, giving the room a pale blue glow, as if we were underwater. Will was asleep on his back beside me, his face slack and peaceful. I padded into the bathroom, latching the door. I opened my case, took out a pin, sat on the toilet, and scratched three short lines just above my right ankle, concentrating on the pain until the aching feeling in my chest began to fade.
This morning, after a lovely breakfast of poached eggs, toast, and fresh fruit, we went back to our room and changed into bathing costumes covered up with the plush robes the hotel provided. We followed the stone path from the back door of the hotel to the springs. It took us to the edge of the yard, to a small pool lined in granite, perhaps ten feet by ten feet. What struck me first was the smell: a sharp, mineral tang tinged with the rotten egg stench of sulfur. Will wrinkled his nose. “Smells haunted,” he joked. I gave him a reproachful glare. Birds chattered from the nearby trees. One of the peacocks came close and gave a screech, but there were no other bathers in the water—we had the pool to ourselves. The water was black! So dark that it seemed to take our reflections and pull them into the darkness, making us disappear. I was actually frightened to get into that obsidian water. Will must have sensed my apprehension, because he put his hand on my arm and said, “We don’t have to do this.”
Was I imagining the nervousness in his voice?
“Of course we’re going in. That’s why we’re here!” I said, slipping off my robe and shoes. I got to the edge and lowered myself in. The water stung the fresh scratches on my ankle. The cold was a shock! So frigid it was painful. I gasped. “I can’t feel the bottom,” I told Will. I held my breath and went down, trying to touch it, but could not. I resurfaced, teeth chattering. The pain of the cold was replaced by numbness. I could not feel the tips of my fingers and toes.
Will slid into the water. “Good God!” he exclaimed.
We swam in quick circles, moving our arms and legs to keep warm, teeth chattering. “You’re beautiful when you’re freezing to death,” Will told me.
The water had weight to it—Will said it was the minerals. As I swam, I felt as if fingers were touching my skin, wrapping themselves around my arms and legs, holding me up then trying to tug me down. After five minutes, we could take no more and got out. We were toweling off when I looked down at my ankle. I blinked in disbelief. The scratches I’d made last night were gone!
A funny little gasp escaped my lips as I rubbed at the unflawed skin.
“Are you all right?” Will asked.
“Ye-yess,” I managed. “Just cold.”
“Your lips are blue, darling wife,” Will announced. His were, too. His skin looked shockingly pale. Suddenly, his eyes focused on the pool, and he asked, “Did you see that?”
“What?” I asked.
He stared down into the dark water, frowning. “Nothing,” he said. “It was nothing. A trick of the light.”
I was sitting in the rose garden beside the hotel when I was approached by Eliza Harding, who waved and smiled as she walked over, greeting me like an old friend she was overjoyed to see. She wore a cheerful blue dress and had her lips painted the perfect shade of red. “May I join you, Mrs. Monroe?” she asked.
I nodded and moved over to make room on the wrought iron bench. “Please call me Ethel,” I said. She sat close by my side, our legs touching.
She pulled a silver cigarette case from her black leather purse and held it open to me. I shook my head. She took out a cigarette and lit it. “You mustn’t tell Benson,” she said. “He thinks it’s vile for a lady to smoke. I love him dearly, but he’s a bit of a wet blanket at times.”
I smiled. “It’s our secret.” I had the same feeling I’d had when I stepped out onto the balcony: an instant sense of familiarity. Like Eliza and I were old friends. Kindred spirits.
“Other than the springs, this rose garden is my favorite place,” she confessed, exhaling a thin blue stream of smoke. “I designed it myself.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes. The beds form three concentric circles bisected by the four paths perfectly aligned by directions: the north/south path and the east/west path. It was all very carefully laid out—months and months of planning and sketching.”
“All your work paid off beautifully,” I told her. “It’s simply stunning.”
She smiled. “It’s odd, really. Trying to impose order on nature. The garden is a living, breathing thing; sometimes I’m quite sure it’s got a mind of its own.”
She could name all the varieties of roses: Aurora, Snow Queen, Persian Yellow, Maiden’s Blush.
“Such lovely names!” I said.
She nodded. “Aren’t they, just? I’ve had some shipped over from England. It’s how I survive the winters here,” she confessed. “Planning, poring over flower catalogs.”
She told me she grew up in Brandenburg, on the back side of the hill where the hotel stands. “My family is there still. It’s lovely to be so close to them.”
She shared such fanciful stories—stories about the springs and the miracles the waters brought. The lame and crippled being able to walk again, soldiers from the war coming home with all sorts of injuries and being cured by the springs. “A soldier, a local boy from town named Ethan, came home. He’d been shot in the head over in France. When he got back, he wasn’t able to speak. Didn’t seem to recognize his own mother and father. It was like everything that made him who he was had been erased by that bullet. But his parents, they put him in that water, and the very next day he woke up begging his mother to make him his favorite dinner—chicken and dumplings. He works over at the quarry now as a foreman.”
I shook my head in disbelief.
“I’ve seen it myself, over and over again,” Eliza told me. “My uncle Raymond, he lived down in St. Albans. He was left blind after an accident at the foundry there. He came back here, took a dip in the springs, and his sight was restored. I swear it.”
“My husband, Will, he’s a doctor. He thinks perhaps there must be antiseptic properties in the minerals.”
She smiled. “Perhaps.”
“I had some cuts—scratches, really—when I went into the water this morning. When I came out, they were healed.”
She nodded knowingly. “There’s no doubt that the water has healing powers. But there’s more to it than that.”
She took a puff from her cigarette and exhaled, watching the smoke drift up.
“There are very old stories about the springs. Some say it’s a door between worlds.”
“Is that what you believe?” I asked.
She stubbed out her cigarette.
“I believe the water holds more power and mystery than most people understand.”
“I heard some believe the springs are cursed,” I said. “Haunted, even.”
She seemed to bristle, her whole body tensing. “People are frightened by the things they don’t understand. Things that can’t be explained with reason and logic and science. The water is not a puzzle to be solved.” She spoke of the springs like a living creature, a dear friend she was defending. “And it doesn’t just cure you. It can grant wishes.”
“Do you truly believe that?” I asked.
She smiled and nodded. “I know it for a fact.” She played with the cuff of her dress, worrying at a loose thread. “It was the springs that brought my husband to me,” she said, voice low and tentative, as though she wasn’t sure she should be sharing this with me.
I raised my eyebrows, leaned closer to her. Our faces were only inches apart. I felt like a schoolgirl again, hidden away in the center of the garden, sharing secrets.
“I went to the water and wished for the thing I wanted most—true love and a family of my own. Soon after, Benson Harding appeared in town.” She paused, closed her eyes, remembering. “Oh, he was so handsome, just the cat’s meow! The bluest eyes I’d ever seen. I knew the instant I saw him that he was the one for me. That the springs had brought him to me!” She reached up, ran her fingers over one of the roses, pulling it close to smell. “He bought the springs, of course, and began to build the hotel. Our courtship lasted less than a year before he asked me to be his wife.”
She plucked the rose, a small white flower, and handed it to me.
“Did you tell him?” I asked, taking the flower, smelling its sweet, heady scent. “Tell him of your wish?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “He didn’t believe a word of it, of course.”
She brought her finger to her lips, and I saw there was a little drop of blood there—a thorn from the rosebush had pricked her.
“I owe it all to the springs,” she said. “I would have none of this if I hadn’t made that wish.” She gestured with her arms at the garden, the lawn, and the hotel. “This hotel, my beautiful garden, a husband I adore, and a brand-new baby who is too perfect for words!”
“A new baby?” My stomach knotted. She truly did have everything. “I didn’t realize. Congratulations.” I carefully pushed my thumb down onto a thorn on the stem she’d handed me, felt it pierce the skin ever so slightly.
“An absolute cherub. As if an angel were plucked down from heaven and given to us. Do you have any children, Ethel?”
“No,” I said. My chest felt heavy, and I looked away, embarrassed as my eyes glazed with tears.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, taking my hand, noticing the blood. “You’ve pricked yourself.” She pulled a lace hankie out of her purse.
“It’s nothing.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said, wiping the blood away, staining the white lace. “I shouldn’t have pried. I can be perfectly lousy sometimes. It’s really none of my business—”
“Please,” I said, “I’m the one who’s sorry, for being so emotional!” I wiped at my eyes. Thought of the little girl I’d held in my dreams last night. “It’s just that it’s been over a year of trying… And, well, I’m starting to think something must be wrong with me.” Even though I’d only just met her, I told her about the egg I carried against my breast and buried in the yard. I laughed at my own foolishness, but her face stayed quiet and serious. “Will says we have plenty of time. But I can’t help feeling that I’m a disappointment to him. You should see him with children. He’d be the best father! I wish I could give him the thing he wants most.” I paused, realized I’d been crushing the poor rosebud Eliza had given me. “I truly believe we’re meant to have a child. I swear, I can feel her out there waiting for me, just as I am waiting for her.”
“Go to the water and tell it.” She smiled slyly. “Promise me you’ll try?”
I kept my promise. Will took an afternoon nap, and I went out to the springs on my own, sneaking my way along the path, heart pounding. I felt like a young girl again, believing in fanciful things, that the world was full of magic and miracles. The green hills, the lush grounds, the roaming peacocks; I felt like a princess. And isn’t it true that in fairy tales, wishes are granted?
Once again, there was no one else at the pool as I approached. It was waiting just for me, shimmering and winking in the sun. I walked up hesitantly, wondering what I was doing, feeling suddenly foolish. But hadn’t I done plenty of foolish things already? Was making a wish at a spring that much different than carrying a sparrow’s egg for days? None of what’d I done so far had worked. Why should this be any different?
It pained me to think how desperate I’d become. It seemed unfair that I had to go to such lengths when it was so easy for other women to bear child after child. And what would Will say if he found me here now?
“Idiot,” I said out loud, and turned to leave before someone caught me there.
But then I thought of my promise to Eliza. And I remembered the feel of my arms around the little girl in my dream—how real she had seemed!—and how empty and aching I’d been when I woke.
Maybe I was an idiot, a foolish and desperate woman, but I ran back to the water’s edge, leaned down, pushed my face right against the surface, and I spoke to my reflection, the words making the deep water ripple. “Please,” I said, “I would do anything. Anything at all, anything to have a child.” My reflection went in and out of focus, and then it wasn’t me I was looking at, but the face of a little girl. The child from my dream with eyes so like my own. My not-yet daughter.
“Please,” I said to the water, “please bring her to me.” I had begun to cry. My tears fell into the pool, and I thought I saw something far beneath my own distorted reflection. A pale flash of movement, here and then gone.
